Replace default Movies, etc with mounted shares?

[rogersmj]

My tv is coming tomorrow, and I've been eagerly reading up on all the possible hacking I can do. My purpose for it will be to stream the tons of content that I have sitting on my file server -- I don't need/want it to sync with iTunes or anything. So obviously I'll be hacking it to install the appropriate codecs and mount samba shares from my Linux server.

I understand I can use ATVFiles and an automounter program to have my SMB shares auto-mounted and then browse them via a separate menu item. What I'd like to do is somehow make the home-screen "Movies" item take me directly to my movies share, or at least place a symlink inside it to route to my share. Can I mount over that default location, or symlink it? Where in the file system is it located?

 

[kjr39]

The share will be located in /Volumes/<share name>

symlinking is the way to go.

1. Rename your Movies directory in your ~ to something other than Movies.
2. Open a terminal and type 'cd /Users/<you>' then 'ln -s /Volumes/<share name> Movies'

Replace <share name> & <you> with whatever the name of your share and your username is.

FWIW, I have found AFP to have much better performance than SMB.

 

[rogersmj]

The share will be located in /Volumes/<share name>

symlinking is the way to go.

1. Rename your Movies directory in your ~ to something other than Movies.
2. Open a terminal and type 'cd /Users/<you>' then 'ln -s /Volumes/<share name> Movies'

Replace <share name> & <you> with whatever the name of your share and your username is.

Thanks. That's about what I figured I could do, I just didn't know if it would screw up any of the ATV's special sauce. Can I do the same thing with TV Shows? I suppose I'll find out this evening, it's supposed to arrive today.

FWIW, I have found AFP to have much better performance than SMB.

I run an Ubuntu Linux server at home for all my file sharing/database needs. I find the performance of samba on my gigabit network to be pretty good, but maybe I'll look into running an AFP server on it concurrently. I still need Samba for the Windows VMs and the odd visitor.

 

[rogersmj]

FWIW, I have found AFP to have much better performance than SMB.

I just wanted to add that I went ahead and installed AFP on my Ubuntu server (something I'd been hoping to try out at some point anyway), and it is freaking awesome. Tons better than SMB. Thanks for convincing me to do it. I wrote about my experience: http://rogersmj.com/articles/afp

 

[kjr39]

Nice article.

That's a heck of a site you have there. Looks really good!